Changes

|website=|video=|summary=Tove Jansson's first short story collection published some 43 years ago in Swedish has lost none of its sparkle. Thomas Teal's first -ever English translation for Sort Of Books, is a sheer delight. The cold and isolation inherent in the stories doesn't detract from the overall uplifting character of the telling.

''The Listener'' is the eponymous first story. Aunt Gerda is every oneeveryone's favourite aunt. She listened to all tales, and repeated none. She loved personally, conscientiously, and without favour. She took pleasure in all of her friends and family and so they did likewise in her. Until, as we're told, she ''was 55 when it began''… Gerda starts to become more distant, less personal, the vagaries of aging ageing memory are setting in. For Gerda, more so than for most of us, this is terrifying. Her whole being is centred around who she is for all of these people and what she means to them is bound up in what she knows, and has not told, about them.

We see Gerda primarily through this phase of her artistic endeavour, but what we see in her is an increasing isolation.